See Also

Definition

Complex responsive processes is one of several views of how complex organization becomes what it becomes. The dominant alternative view is the systemic process view. See organization for a summary of causal ways of thinking about organization.

Complex responsive processes of relating is descriptive, what people are doing in organizations, not prescriptive, what they could or should be doing. It describes the joint action of the members of the organization that results in, knowledge creation with its perpetual construction of the future as identity and difference.

The complex responsive processes perspective the organization dynamics of complex organizations based in insights from complexity sciences. This perspective, sometimes labeled as the responsive processes view, explain organization evolution and transformation. Complex responsive processes explain the evolving processes of relating between people who form an organization. This is the basis for a theory, or perspective, of strategy, where human interaction is perpetually constructing the future as the known-unknown, that is, as continuity and potential transformation at the same time. This perspective reflects a theory of transformative causality -- a fundamentally paradoxical theory of causality. (Stacey, 2007, pp 435)

See communication for the complex responsive processes perspective on communication, the gesture-response model, and how it contrasts with the cybernetic sender-receiver model based on systemic thinking, or a systemic processes view of organization.

See communicative interaction for an explanation of its nature and structure based on a complex responsive processes view of human interaction.

The distinctive feature of humanity is the sophisticated manner in which individual human bodies undertake joint action...

cooperation with each other in order to survive and develop

undertaken to transform their environment in the interest of their survival and development

accomplished by the use of tools

requiring continuous communicative interaction between them

communicative interaction accomplished in the medium of proto, significant, and reified symbols

and in that interaction emerges the very identity of humans, both individual and collective

Complex responsive processes of relating are the basis for all forms of human joint action using tools, not matter how sophisticated those tools might be

Identity, a sense of self, is formed and transformed. See identity.

Difference in identity as a source of novelty. See identity.

Meaning, knowledge, emerges from this process. See knowledge creation.

Knowledge cannot be stored, but reified symbols can be stored as artifacts, that is, ""abstracted"" themes describing past interactions and the qualities that emerged in those interactions. See symbols.

Complex responsive process view - an alternative to the systemic process view (Source: Stacey, 2007, pp 4) --
Complex responsive processes is an interpretation of the insights from the complexity sciences, departing altogether from the notion of organization as a system and from the focus on the individual. Instead it draws on certain strands of thinking in sociology that stress human interdependence and regard individuals as thoroughly social selves that arise in human interaction. That interaction can be described as complex responsive processes of human relating.

It is in such responsive local interaction that population-wide patterns emerge.

Responsive processes conceptualization of organizations --
Organizations are population-wide patterns of responsive processes that form a collective identity. Organizational identity co-evolves with individual identity, emerging from continually iterated responsive processes that are essentially local in nature and occurring in the living present. Organizations are thus conceptualized as ongoing patterning in the interactions between people and denies that it constitutes a system or even that it is useful to think of the organization 'as if' it were a system.

No one can step outside the ongoing responsive processes of interaction and so no one can influence the emerging patterns from an external position. The only influence any of us can have is in our participating in the ongoing responsive process of relating to each other. This is not to take an ideological position in which relating is somehow good, because oppression, ethnic cleaning, racial abuse, murder, and war are also iterated, ongoing, responsive processes of people relating to each other.

The dominant discourse separates macro (global or population-wide)

In organization theory, the term 'macro' refers to global or population-wide levels of existence or study, in contrast to 'micro' that refers to local levels of existence or study. These terms reflect the systems thinking construct that distinguishes parts from wholes and the separation of the individual and the group, whether the group is an organization or society. (Stacey, 2007, pp 5)

Complex responsive processes and strategy --
Complex responsive processes is a responsive processes theory of strategy, in contrast to the systemic theories. This theory refers to the evolving processes of relating between people who form an organization. This is the basis for a theory, or perspective, of strategy, where human interaction is perpetually constructing the future as the known-unknown, that is, as continuity and potential transformation at the same time. This perspective reflects a theory of transformative causality -- a fundamentally paradoxical theory of causality. (Stacey, 2007, pp 435)

This theory refers to the evolving processes of relating between people who form an organization. This is the basis for a theory, or perspective, of strategy, where human interaction is perpetually constructing the future as the known-unknown, that is, as continuity and potential transformation at the same time. This perspective reflects a theory of transformative causality -- a fundamentally paradoxical theory of causality.

Strategy is the evolving pattern of what an organization is, its identity. It is the evolving pattern of what an organization is. An organization is what it is because of a history of relating and it will become what it becomes in the local communicative interaction and power relating between people in the living present.

The complex responsive processes perspective regards interaction between people as iterated processes of communication and power relating. There is no notion here of a system, and what people are producing in their interaction is further patterns of interaction in which they imaginatively construct 'wholes' which they tend to idealize. Such imaginative 'wholes' are understood as ideologies rather than systems. The theory of complex responsive processes, therefore, represents a move from a spatial metaphor of inside and outside to temporal processes of continual reproduction and potential transformation. Complex responsive processes are fundamentally conversation in nature, forming and being formed by power relations and ideologically based choices.

The analysis focuses at a micro level and concentrates on the paradoxical dynamics of stable instability in which local interaction produces emergent population-wide patterns in relating and these could take novel forms through the amplification of diversity and human spontaneity. This perspective emphasizes the importance of diversity and deviance as essential to the internal capacity to change spontaneously. In this evolving, potentially creative process, unpredictability is central, inviting further exploration of how people act into the unknown.